4 Clever Ways To Hashtag Without Annoying Your Followers!

We all know that hashtags are a great way to grow your reach, promote your product or services and be discovered by new followers! But, have you ever felt like you are “over hashtagging” and it could be affecting your brand image and/or annoying your following? You’re not alone!

Some believe that too many hashtags can convey to their audience that they are ‘desperate for likes’.

Although most people are aware it’s simply the best way to get your posts seen, inappropriate or overuse of hashtags can appear ‘spammy’ and damage your brand as a result!

This quite often puts people off hashtagging as they are worried how it is making them look. However, hashtags are crucial and by no means at all should be avoided!

Below are 4 simple ways you can make the most out of hashtags without annoying or discouraging your followers.

1. Add your hashtags in the comments

Having a long list of hashtags in your caption can appear messy and unorganised. Instead, add your hashtags in a comment. This will keep your posts looking much neater and clean, but also you won’t be bombarding your followers with tons of hashtags!

You can also essentially ‘hide your hashtags’ if you comment them. By adding line breaks in your comment it forces Instagram to hide that comment because it is too long. This means the comment containing your hashtag will appear as this: [...] as opposed to a long list of hashtags.

However, make sure you comment your hashtags as soon as possible once the post has been posted. This is because, when you add hashtags to your photos, it will appear in the hashtag feed in the order that the photo was published, not when the hashtag was wrote. So, if you leave it too long to add your hashtags it is very likely your photo will already be lost within thousands of other posts using the same hashtag. So, if you’re not wanting to add your hashtag in the actual caption, ensure you have your list of hashtags ready to copy and paste into the comments as soon as you post your photo!

2. Make them easy to read

A list of complicated, hard to read, long hashtags are annoying for users to read. Avoid using really long hashtags as they are 1) Difficult to read which viewers find irritating and 2) They are easy to misspell so either you may mis spell it or those searching for the hashtag may mis spell it. Keep them short and sweet as these are much more commonly searched for and look a lot nicer! Another good tip for making your hashtags more readable is to use capitals at the start of each hashtag eg #SocialMedia #SocialMediaAdvice.

3. Hide hashtags on your story

You can now add hashtags to your stories which can allow you to expand your reach even further! If you’re holding back from adding hashtags because you fear it’s annoying your followers, looks messy, covering too much of your photo or portraying you as as desperate... fear not! There’s a solution! Simply add your hashtags to your story, making the text as small as possible and hide them behind a sticker, emoji, location tag or even a block of text. This will mean your hashtags will still be doing their job and reaching a larger audience, just without you plastering your stories with 30 hashtags each time.

4. Don’t overdo it

The limit of hashtags you are allowed on instagram is 30. While in theory the more hashtags you use, the more chances your post will be viewed, it can come across like you are trying too hard which generally doesn’t resonate well with existing and potential followers. You don’t want it to come across like you are desperate for for likes and followers, stick to a few, relevant, catchy hashtags for the best overall results!

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